#winesap records

[dustedmagazine]

Brian Harnetty — Words and Silences (Winesap Records)

Words and Silences by Brian Harnetty

Composer and instrumentalist Brian Harnetty has accomplished something rare in Words and Silences. He has achieved a compelling, an oddly timely synthesis of the recorded reflections of Thomas Merton and Harnetty’s own limpid music. Merton, the Kentucky-based Trappist monk who achieved a halting fame in the mid-20th century, recorded a series of reflections in 1967, the year before his unexpected death in Thailand. These are fundamentally reflections on those things noted in Harnetty’s title, but also on books and identity and nature. They are not overly self-regarding or verbose, and it’s that sense of sparseness and gentle clarity that Harnetty’s music also possesses.

On this series of uncluttered, usually brief tracks, Harnetty – who plays piano here – employs an ensemble consisting of clarinetist Katie Porter Maxwell, trumpeter Phil Rodriguez, trombonist William Lang, and Jeremy Woodroff on flute, alto and baritone. It’s rare to hear the full ensemble playing at once, since the intention behind Harnetty’s pieces is create spaces for reflection and also for meditating on Merton’s own commentaries, which are unfailingly compelling. Be thankful, too, that Harnetty has included all the instrumental tracks on their own (which is how I began to digest this record) as well as in accompaniment to Merton. There are resonant piano figures, repeating notes that dissipate and reform; multiple passages where a lonely clarinet writes pastoral sketches in the sky; grouped brass is a constant; and in general the tone is lyrical and patient, Harnetty slowly dilating the harmony bit by bit. If listening for influences in these gentle pieces, with their overlapping lines lapping at your ears, certainly minimalist composers come to mind; but I also hear a nod to the precise orchestration of artists ranging from Neutral Milk Hotel to Sujan Stevens. Consider “Well, Cats, Now We Change Our Tune,” where the piano arpeggio is flanked by Lang’s trombone and Maxwell’s B-flat clarinet. Some of my favorite pieces, though, are for Harnetty alone: “Strange Things You Sometimes Find” or “Let There Be a Moving Mosaic of This Rich Material” are particular piano standouts. 

Whether or not you have any familiarity with Merton’s thinking, or his far-reaching influence on religious pacifism and the contemplative tradition, it’s easy to just nestle in and bathe in the words as if they were another instrument. Merton speaks with an assured baritone, his diction unfailingly patient. The recordings are almost all accompanied with the sounds of the natural world, frequently birds, or rainfall, or a running brook. On “Sound of an Unperplexed Wren,” for example, he at length simply states “no comment necessary” before cycling through names of sub-species familiar no doubt to birdwatchers. He reads a Beckett fragment, riffing briefly on the importance of how writing sounds. These moments of clarity and frank observation, though, are outweighed by Merton’s ruminations on the perplexity of everything, or meditating on how it is possible for one human to identify with another. 

This blend of ideas is perfectly complemented Harnetty’s lilting melodies. On “Who is This I?” we’re treated to the gentle interplay of instruments, birdsong, Merton’s thoughts on Sufi mysticism, and his interjections about the recorded medium itself. The latter range from the mundane (“This needs to be louder, I think”) to the philosophical: on “Thinking Out Loud in a Hermitage” Merton opines, he describes his process as not “two machines recording each other, but a speaking which will somehow bring to the surface this metaphysical perplexity of man in the presence of his own being, or being in the presence of other beings, in such a way that the unity is manifest of the one and many.”

In this fractious times, I found myself not just compelled but consoled by this music. Harnetty’s writing is pure, though never necessarily hymnal, and Merton’s generosity of spirit and his candor can be a balm. Whether he discusses Mary Lou Williams or Michel Foucault, he is invariably drawn to what lies outside of himself: the hawk waiting by the cross in a poplar tree, on the morning of Pentecost; or the idea of examining fragments, seeing not just difference but the possibility of making mosaics. Harnetty is to be commended for writing such gorgeous music, and for realizing such a project.

Jason Bivins

[pastelpengwin]

I changed Big Sugar's name to Bright Bramley because I think it sounds better, lol. But here is my version of the Apple Family Tree.  Are you ready for the lore dump, cuz here it comes!

Granny Smith, Winesap and Ashmead are fraternal triplets, (on the note of Winesap, he does have his own family, but I didn’t want to get into that as this is mainly to show Flim and Flam’s relation to the Apples.)

Now to address that topic, Flim and Flam’s mother Pomona met their father Hocus Pocus while passing through Manehattan on a delivery, she became infatuated with him and after an argument with her parents about how Hocus is a con pony, she ran away to live with him on a small farm just outside Manehattan, where Flim and Flam were born and raised.

After she left, Ashmead just kinda stopped talking about her, cutting contact completely, the other Apple family members don’t know about Flim and Flam and no one talks about Pomona’s leaving.

After the incident Flim and Flam move to Sweet Apple Acres while they recover, they eventually start helping out around the farm, and slowly, they become friends with the Apples and they bury the hatchet. AJ, Big Mac and Apple Bloom decide to visit Goldie again and Apple Bloom invites Flim and Flam along because they miss travelling.

When they get there, Goldie takes one look at the brothers and says “you two are the splitting image of your mother”. Flim and Flam ask how she knows their mother and Goldie searches through her records and shows everypony an old photo of Granny Smith, Winesap, Ashmead, Bright Mac and Pomona. She points at Pomona and says “she is your mother, isn’t she? She’s an Apple” Suffice to say, everypony is shocked to hear the news, although Granny reveals she had a sneaking suspicion they were Apples. 

[thepoemeater-blog]

One Christmastime Fats Waller in a fur coat Rolled beaming from a taxicab with two pretty girls   Each at an arm as he led them in a thick downy snowfall Across Thirty-Fourth Street into the busy crowd Shopping at Macy’s: perfume, holly, snowflake displays. Chimes rang for change. In Toys, where my mother worked Over her school vacation, the crowd swelled and stood Filling the aisles, whispered at the fringes, listening To the sounds of the large, gorgeously dressed man, His smile bemused and exalted, lips boom-booming a bold Bass line as he improvised on an expensive, tinkly Piano the size of a lady’s jewel box or a wedding cake. She put into my heart this scene from the romance of Joy, Co-authored by her and the movies, like her others– My father making the winning basket at the buzzer And punching the enraged gambler who came onto the court– The brilliant black and white of the movies, texture Of wet snowy fur, the taxi’s windshield, piano keys, Reflections that slid over the thick brass baton That worked the elevator. Happiness needs a setting: Shepherds and shepherdesses in the grass, kids in a store, The back room of Carly’s parents’ shop, record-player And paper streamers twisted in two colors: what I felt Dancing close one afternoon with a thin blonde girl Was my amazing good luck, the pleased erection Stretching and stretching at the idea She likes me, She likes it, the thought of legs under a woolen skirt, To see eyes “melting” so I could think This is it, They’re melting! Mutual arousal of suddenly feeling Desired: This is it: “desire”! When we came out Into the street we saw it had begun, the firm flakes Sticking, coating the tops of cars, melting on the wet Black street that reflected storelights, soft Separate crystals clinging intact on the nap of collar And cuff, swarms of them stalling in the wind to plunge Sideways and cluster in spangles on our hair and lashes, Melting to a fresh glaze on the bloodwarm porcelain Of our faces, Hey nonny-nonny boom-boom, the cold graceful Manna, heartfelt, falling and gathering copious As the air itself in the small-town main street As it fell over my mother’s imaginary and remembered Macy’s in New York years before I was even born, II And the little white piano, tinkling away like crazy– My unconceived heart in a way waiting somewhere like Wherever it goes in sleep. Later, my eyes opened And I woke up glad to feel the sunlight warm High up in the window, a brighter blue striping Blue folds of curtain, and glad to hear the house Was still sleeping. I didn’t call, but climbed up To balance my chest on the top rail, cheek Pressed close where I had grooved the rail’s varnish With sets of double tooth-lines. Clinging With both arms, I grunted, pulled one leg over And stretched it as my weight started to slip down With some panic till my toes found the bottom rail, Then let my weight slide more till I was over– Thrilled, half-scared, still hanging high up With both hands from the spindles. Then lower Slipping down until I could fall to the floor With a thud but not hurt, and out, free in the house. Then softly down the hall to the other bedroom To push against the door; and when it came open More light came in, opening out like a fan So they woke up and laughed, as she lifted me Up in between them under the dark red blanket, We all three laughing there because I climbed out myself. Earlier still, she held me curled in close With everyone around saying my name, and hovering, After my grandpa’s cigarette burned me on the neck As he held me up for the camera, and the pain buzzed Scaring me because it twisted right inside me; So when she took me and held me and I curled up, sucking, It was as if she had put me back together again So sweetly I was glad the hurt had torn me. She wanted to have made the whole world up, So that it could be hers to give. So she opened   A letter I wrote my sister, who was having trouble Getting on with her, and read some things about herself That made her go to the telephone and call me up: “You shouldn’t open other people’s letters,” I said And she said “Yes–who taught you that?” –As if she owned the copyright on good and bad, Or having followed pain inside she owned her children From the inside out, or made us when she named us, III Made me Robert. She took me with her to a print-shop Where the man struck a slug: a five-inch strip of lead With the twelve letters of my name, reversed, Raised along one edge, that for her sake he made For me, so I could take it home with me to keep And hold the letters up close to a mirror Or press their shapes into clay, or inked from a pad Onto all kinds of paper surfaces, onto walls and shirts, Lengthwise on a Band-Aid, or even on my own skin– The little characters fading from my arm, the gift Always ready to be used again. Gifts from the heart: Her giving me her breast milk or my name, Waller Showing off in a store, for free, giving them A thrill as someone might give someone an erection, For the thrill of it–or you come back salty from a swim: Eighteen shucked fresh oysters and the cold bottle Sweating in its ribbon, surprise, happy birthday! So what if the giver also takes, is after something? So what if with guile she strove to color Everything she gave with herself, the lady’s favor A scarf or bit of sleeve of her favorite color Fluttering on the horseman’s bloodflecked armor Just over the heart–how presume to forgive the breast Or sudden jazz for becoming what we want? I want Presents I can’t picture until they come, The generator flashlight Italo gave me one Christmas: One squeeze and the gears visibly churning in the amber Pistol-shaped handle hummed for half a minute In my palm, the spare bulb in its chamber under my thumb, Secret; or, the knife and basswood Ellen gave me to whittle. And until the gift of desire, the heart is a titular, Insane king who stares emptily at his counselors For weeks, drools or babbles a little, as word spreads In the taverns that he is dead, or an impostor. One day A light concentrates in his eyes, he scowls, alert, and points Without a word to one pass in the cold, grape-colored peaks– Generals and courtiers groan, falling to work With a frantic movement of farriers, cooks, builders, The city thrown willing or unwilling like seed (While the brain at the same time may be settling Into the morning Chronicle, humming to itself, Like a fat person eating M&M’s in the bathtub) IV Toward war, new forms of worship or migration. I went out from my mother’s kitchen, across the yard Of the little two-family house, and into the Woods: Guns, chevrons, swordplay, a scarf of sooty smoke Rolled upwards from a little cratewood fire Under the low tent of a Winesap fallen With fingers rooting in the dirt, the old orchard Smothered among the brush of wild cherry, sumac, Sassafras and the stifling shade of oak In the strip of overgrown terrain running East from the train tracks to the ocean, woods Of demarcation, where boys went like newly-converted Christian kings with angels on helmet and breastplate, Bent on blood or poaching. There are a mountain and a woods Between us–a male covenant, longbows, headlocks. A pack Of four stayed half-aware it was past dark In a crude hut roasting meat stolen from the A&P Until someone’s annoyed father hailed us from the tracks And scared us home to catch hell: We were worried, Where have you been? In the Woods. With snakes and tramps. An actual hobo knocked at our back door One morning, declining food, to get hot water. He shaved on our steps from an enamel basin with brush And cut-throat razor, the gray hair on his chest Armorial in the sunlight–then back to the woods, And the otherlife of snakes, poison oak, boxcars. Were the trees cleared first for the trains or the orchard? Walking home by the street because it was dark, That night, the smoke-smell in my clothes was like a bearskin. Where the lone hunter and late bird have seen us Pass and repass, the mountain and the woods seem To stand darker than before–words of sexual nostalgia In a song or poem seemed cloaked laments For the woods when Indians made lodges from the skin Of birch or deer. When the mysterious lighted room Of a bus glided past in the mist, the faces Passing me in the yellow light inside Were a half-heard story or a song. And my heart Moved, restless and empty as a scrap of something Blowing in wide spirals on the wind carrying The sound of breakers clearly to me through the pass Between the blocks of houses. The horn of Roland V But what was it I was too young for? On moonless Nights, water and sand are one shade of black, And the creamy foam rising with moaning noises Charges like a spectral army in a poem toward the bluffs Before it subsides dreamily to gather again. I thought of going down there to watch it a while, Feeling as though it could turn me into fog, Or that the wind would start to speak a language And change me–as if I knocked where I saw a light Burning in some certain misted window I passed, A house or store or tap-room where the strangers inside Would recognize me, locus of a new life like a woods Or orchard that waxed and vanished into cloud Like the moon, under a spell. Shrill flutes, Oboes and cymbals of doom. My poor mother fell, And after the accident loud noises and bright lights Hurt her. And heights. She went down stairs backwards, Sometimes with one arm on my small brother’s shoulder. Over the years, she got better. But I was lost in music; The cold brazen bow of the saxophone, its weight At thumb, neck and lip, came to a bloodwarm life Like Italo’s flashlight in the hand. In a white Jacket and pants with a satin stripe I aspired To the roughneck elegance of my Grandfather Dave. Sometimes, playing in a bar or at a high school dance, I felt My heart following after a capacious form, Sexual and abstract, in the thunk, thrum, Thrum, come-wallow and then a little screen Of quicker notes goosing to a fifth higher, winging To clang-whomp of a major seventh: listen to me Listen to me, the heart says in reprise until sometimes In the course of giving itself it flows out of itself All the way across the air, in a music piercing As the kids at the beach calling from the water Look, Look at me, to their mothers, but out of itself, into The listener the way feeling pretty or full of erotic revery Makes the one who feels seem beautiful to the beholder Witnessing the idea of the giving of desire–nothing more wanted Than the little singing notes of wanting–the heart Yearning further into giving itself into the air, breath Strained into song emptying the golden bell it comes from, The pure source poured altogether out and away.

Robert Pinksy, History of My Heart